


She's Like the Sun (and I'm Hanging On)

by wombaton



Series: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Way Sisters [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Coming of Age, F/M, M/M, Mikey and Gerard are both trans girls in this, Trans Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wombaton/pseuds/wombaton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Way sisters are like nothing Frank has ever encountered in his life.</p><p>The three of them meet when he’s ten and to be fair, at that point, the Way sisters don’t even know that they’re the Way sisters themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She's Like the Sun (and I'm Hanging On)

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea bouncing around in my head for awhile now and I finally just got around to writing it. It wasn't supposed to end the way it did, but the story some how got away from me, so a sequel is already in the works. I will forewarn for transphobia from a third party character against Mikey (for a moment) and also for homophobic language.

The Way sisters are like nothing Frank has ever encountered in his life.

The three of them meet when he’s ten. To be fair, at that point, the Way sisters don’t even know that they’re the Way sisters themselves.

They move into the house down the block that Mrs. Merian lived in, right up until her kids decided that 87 was too old to be living alone and made her move in with them. She was a nice woman, but not very entertaining for Frank, who now glowed at the prospect of having not just one but two new kids to play with.

He runs down the road the minute his mother says that it’s okay to “go and bother them”.

When he knocks on the glass door with a chubby fist, smudging the glass with the dirt on his fingertips, a kid with tangled brown hair answers the door. He looks about the same age as Frank, but they have a solid six inches of height on him.

“Who are you?” the kid says in lieu of a hello.

“My mom calls me Frank Anthony but I don’t like that, I just like Frank,” he says back.

A woman’s voice sounds from the inside; “Michael? Who’s at the door?”

The boy – _Michael_ – turns his head and shouts back. “Some kid named Frank.”

“I’m the boy from down the street and I saw you just moved in and –,” Frank’s cut off by the thundering and telltale sound of footsteps descending a staircase.

“Mom,” A new voice yells, “Where’s my NES? I put it in the box with the blue tape on it and –,”

“It should be in there Gerard!”

The footsteps tromp closer and another kid with long black hair and a rounded face pushes the door open even wider, “Mikey you didn’t touch it did you?”

“Why would I touch it?”

“I don’t know, you like touching my things you little animal,” the kid says, “Maybe the next time you touch something that isn’t yours I’ll break your fingers.”

Frank shrinks back a little bit. Maybe coming down to play wasn’t such a good idea.

“Hey,” Mikey looks indignant. “Mom! Gerard said he’s gonna break my fingers!”

“Momma’s boy,” Gerard teases.

“Mom!” Mikey yells again and runs out of sight.

“Um…” Frank toes at the cement of the porch, “I think I’m just gonna –”

“Who are you?” The boy—Gerard, his mind helpfully supplies—whirls on him now, and Frank is a little scared about how piercing his gaze is.

“I’m uh… well…” he scratches at his neck. “I’m Frank.”

“Frank huh,” Gerard regards him with an apathetic eye roll. “Well, what do you want?”

“Well you guys just moved in and you’re the only other kids on the block and my mom, well, she works a lot and isn’t home so much—but that’s not her fault!—but yeah and sometimes I get really bored after school and–” Frank’s cut off when Gerard holds up a hand.

“You’re a little motormouth aren’t you?”

“I’m not that little,” Frank blushes.  “Mom says I just haven’t hit my growth spurt yet.”

Gerard rolls his eyes. They stand in silence for another couple of seconds while Frank feels himself get the onceover.

“So…” Gerard pushes open the door as wide as it can go. “Wanna come in and help me find my NES then?”

Frank scrambles inside, not needing to be told twice. They hang out for so long that he ends up being invited to stay for dinner.

 

 

It’s a little more than two months after Frank’s twelfth birthday when Mikey and Gerard sit him down one day and Gerard says, “I want you to stop calling me and Mikey brothers.”

“What?”

The three of them are lounging in Gerard’s room. Frank’s been here a couple of times, but usually when he comes over, they stick to Mikey’s side of the house. It’s not like Frank hasn’t really intimately seen Gerard’s bedroom, but he typically stays away from it unless Mikey pulls him in or Gerard needs his help with something.

Franks adjusts himself on Gerard’s bed, back to the wall, careful not to wrinkle the Metallica poster he’s resting on. Mikey clears his throat from the foot of the bed.

“We’re not brothers,” he says quietly.

All of them have grown over the past year and a half since knowing each other. Mikey’s hair has gotten a bit longer, stringier too, and he’s following Gerard’s lead into teenage rebellion. He’s almost thirteen now, but he looks fifteen with his height, even taller than his sibling now.

Gerard, who in a fit of angst decided to dip dye the tips of his hair fire engine red, sits next to Mikey on the bed and plucks at the fraying threads of the bedsheet. He hasn’t lost any of his baby fat, in fact maybe even gaining more in the process of growing older, and become moodier as of late. Whenever Frank’s mom sees Gerard walk home from school in his ripped up jeans and music blasting so loud you can hear it across the street, she’ll sometimes laugh softly to herself and shake her head. When Frank asks her what she’s laughing about, she tells him that he’ll find out first hand in a couple of years.

He has no idea what she means.

“But you two have the same mom,” Frank looks between them, confused. “Right? I mean, even if you didn’t have the same mom, sometimes people still call each other brothers because—”

Gerard waves him off and scowls, “Yeah, motormouth, we have the same mom.”

“But doesn’t that make you—”

“We’re not brothers,” Mikey says again, “Because we’re sisters.”

Frank pauses and purses his lips. Then he nods and says “So you’re both girls?”

“Right,” Mikey smiles softly.

“We’re telling you this because Mikey has it in her head that we can trust you,” Gerard says. “And if you fuck this up for either one of us and tell somebody before we do I swear to god –”

“Gerard!” Mikey shoves him. “Be nice to him you idiot!”

“No, no it’s okay,” Frank holds up his hands. “So like…I call you guys girls now? Like she and stuff?”

Gerard bites at his bottom lip.

“Yeah,” she says, “Yeah I’d like that. Mikes?”

Mikey hums in acknowledgement. “I don’t think you can do it in front of mom though yet.”

“Right, right,” Gerard stares at Frank. “You can only call us girls and she and stuff when it’s just the three of us, okay?”

Frank nods.

“And you gotta promise that you won’t tell anyone,” Mikey says. “Unless like, we tell you it’s cool first to start calling us girls.”

“Okay,” Frank laces his fingers together so he’ll stop fidgeting with them. “But there’s just one thing I don’t understand though.”

Mikey looks at him apprehensively. In the short time they’ve gotten to know each other, they’ve become close. Frank wouldn’t hesitate to call them best friends. Because of this, he wants to do everything he can to respect Mikey in whatever she wants to do. The same goes for Gerard, although they’ve somewhat grown apart since Gerard’s started high school and has magically become too cool for middle schoolers.

“Well like…if you’re girls…” he says slowly, “then do you still wanna be called Mikey and Gerard or…”

Mikey smiles so wide it’s like the fucking sun and Frank almost looks away. Almost.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah I still wanna be called Mikey.”

Gerard cushions her chin in her hands and is quiet for a moment.

“I think I wanna just be called Gee,” she whispers. “Is that okay?”

“Well it’s your name,” Frank says back instantly. “It’s okay so long as you’re okay with it.”

Gee regards him with an honest to god smile. It’s soft and reaches her eyes, making them light up with something Frank hasn’t seen before. In that moment he realizes that she’s absolutely beautiful. And it scares the shit out of him.

It’s like a weight has been lifted from the air between them all. Mikey lets out a giddy little laugh and lets himself—herself, damn it, this is going to take some getting used to—fall backwards on the bed next to Frank.

“You know, maybe you’re alright after all, kid,” says Gee, and keeps on smiling.

 

 

Knowing that the Way sisters are, well, _sisters_ doesn’t change anything between Frank, Mikey, and Gerard (now just Gee, although if Frank sometimes slips up she doesn’t get mad at all).  In fact, if anything, it helps Frank understand the two girls better.

He understands why sometimes they want to go out and ride their bikes to the park but other times they just want to stay inside in the dark and not really do anything but lie on Gee’s bed in perfect silence. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s easy.

Sometimes, it’s not Mikey and Gee with the problem of being curious about gender and sexuality. Every once in a while it’s Frank.

“So is there a thing where you like boys and girls?” Frank asks later that summer, while he watches Gee practice putting on her make up in the bathroom mirror. Frank sits on the floor just across the hallway from her. He’d never say it aloud, but he’s kind of jealous at how effortlessly Gee makes the whole putting on make-up ordeal look.

She brushes at her eyelashes twice more before capping the wand in its tube.

“Well I mean, there is bisexuality,” she says, propping her hip against the bathroom counter as she turns to look at him. “And pansexuality too but my definition on the two of those are kinda fuzzy. I’m still working to understand them myself.”

“What’s pansexual?”

“From what I understand, it’s attraction to an individual regardless of gender.”

“But aren’t there only two genders?”

Gerard laughs but it’s not teasing in nature.

“See that’s what I thought too at one point but it turns out that gender’s not as binary as we thought,” Gee opens one of the cabinets under the sink and pulls out a dirty silver make-up bag, tossing it up with the tube of mascara. “Like, gender’s not just male and female and shit but it’s on a spectrum.”

“A spectrum?”

“Yeah, like there’s male and female and stuff but there’s also non-binary.” Gee unzips the bag and from it pulls a tube of bright, cherry red lipstick. She applies it liberally to her top and bottom lips and smacks them together.

“There are people out there who don’t even have genders,” she says after a minute. “And there’s people out there who don’t even use she or he pronouns but really cool ones like ze or xim.”

“Zim?” Frank’s face scrunches up. “Sounds like a name you’d give an alien or something.”

“What are you a parrot?” she giggles. “Yeah, I suppose so. But it’s typically spelled with like an X and stuff it’s totally cool and–”

Gee pauses to study herself in the mirror, turning her face this way and that. Then her face twists into a scowl. Nails dig into her palms.

Frank notices immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

She stomps over to the toilet to stand on her tip toes and wrench open the cupboard. She snatches out a pack of her mother’s make up wipes, careful not to rip the packaging in the process of pulling out a rag.

“I look stupid,” she grits through clenched teeth.

“Gee?” Frank gets to his feet.

“I look like a fucking little boy playing with his mom’s make up.”

She presses the wipe to her bottom lip just as Frank yells out “No don’t!”

The tone of his voice startles Gee and she drops the wipe. He’s stopped her before she’s mussed the lipstick too bad, but she’s managed to smear the rouge from her upper lip half way across her cheek. There are tears in her eyes and Frank can’t help but say, “You looked beautiful.”

She sniffs and looks like she wants to say something.

“Go home Frank,” she says instead, picking up the wipe again. “I’ll tell Mikey you stopped by looking for her.”

Something goes sour in Frank’s mouth. He runs home and two months later Gee ships off to college without so much as a goodbye.

 

 

The first time Frank gets into an honest-to-god fistfight, it’s the first day of his freshman year of high school. Although Mikey is a year older than him, the two wind up in the same math class due to Frank having a knack for math and Mikey needing all the help she can get.

Mikey wears a skirt into first period geometry and someone on the side decides to snicker at her and whisper _faggot_.

Frank’s head whirls around so fast that Mikey’s afraid it might snap off his neck.

“The _fuck_ did you just say?” he demands, standing.

“Mr. Iero!” the teacher snaps. “I will not tolerate that kind of language in my class.”

He realizes he’s making a scene. Mikey tugs on his shirt, trying to pull him to sit down. Her face is scarlet red with embarrassment.

“Please,” she whispers. “Don’t get in trouble.”

Frank concedes. Fixing his shirt, he sits down and pulls a red spiral bound notebook out of his bag. He borrows a pencil from Mikey, who’s picked up the habit from Gee of carrying no less than 57 pencils on her person at all times. It’s useful for school.

A few moments later the kid—something McCracken, Frank thinks that’s when he said here in roll call— decides to rear his ugly head their way again.

“You heard me, fag,” McCracken whispers. He kicks the back of Frank’s chair hard enough to make him jolt.

“Don’t do anything he’s just trying to get a rise out of you,” Mikey murmurs, not turning to look at Frank. “Try not to give his tiny brain any validation.”

Frank scoots his foot out into the aisle between the desk and wraps it around Mikey’s ankle. She smiles, eyes still on the board as she furiously scribbles down the notes.

“Aw that’s cute, looking out for your little butt buddy,” McCracken adjusts in his seat and kicks at Mikey’s chair. “Hey princess I’m just curious, is your dick bigger than your boyfriend’s there? Do you two measure them while you paint each other’s nails? Or do you just –”

Frank doesn’t even think about punching this asshole in the face, he just turns around and does. His fist lands solid and right in the middle of McCracken’s face. Due to the fact that he was in the middle of saying something (something fucking awful and stupid, Frank’s mind supplies) the first two fingers of Frank’s right hand catch on McCracken’s teeth.

He pulls away, there’s not just blood cascading down McCracken’s nose but there are also two jagged cuts on his hand.

The whole room, even the teacher, seems absolutely dumbfounded. McCracken yowls like a cat with its tail caught in a rat trap.

“My nose!” he gurgles, cradling his face. “You broke my fucking nose you cocksucker!”

Mikey’s eyes are so wide Frank’s afraid that they’re going to roll right out of her head.

“I’m just gonna see myself to the office,” Frank says casually, popping out of his seat. He scoops his textbook, Mikey’s pencil, and the spiral bound back into his bag, zips it shut, and slings the strap onto one shoulder. “I’m sorry for the disturbance Mrs. Dean but I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.”

He waves to her politely, nods to Mikey, and exits the classroom.

He gets suspended for the rest of the week and it’s only the first day of school.

 

 

“I hear you got in fifteen fistfights this year,” Gee says. “That’s three less than last year. Maybe they’re finally learning.”

“I fucking hope so,” Frank scratches at his knee through a hole in his jeans. They’re sitting outside on the Way’s back porch, Gee smoking a cigarette she managed to steal from her mother’s purse. Frank initially came over to see if Mikey was interested in biking it down to the comic shop on Main, but found Gee unpacking boxes and saying that her sister took off with a black haired boy in a shitty El Camino.

She hands it to Frank. He takes a drag.

“Mom says that the principal says that if I get caught fighting again they’re gonna make me transfer schools.”

It’s the summer between sophomore and junior year for Frank. Gee’s found the time to come home from her fancy art school in New York to visit with her family, and by extension, that means Frank too. She’s let her hair grow out to her shoulders and dyed it fire engine red. It’s tied back into a little bun at the nape of her neck and it looks fantastic on her. The crush that Frank thought he buried back in the sixth grade has returned with a vengeance. His mouth goes all cottony.

“Transfer?” Gee says when he hands the cigarette back to her. She’s slimmed down so much that Frank hardly recognized her from the chubby girl that took off for NYU. It’s almost as if she’s pulled a reverse freshman fifteen. “You transfer and they’re going to eat Mikey alive.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,”

“Why not?”

“There’s this boy that’s been hanging around her, Peter Wentz,” Frank shakes his head. “He’s completely head over heels for her. It would be cute if he wasn’t so nauseatingly sappy with all the shitty poetry he slips into her locker.”

Gee laughs. It’s high pitched and short, like the chirping of a bird. Frank wishes he had a recorder so he could tape it and listen to it forever on a loop.

“Oh my god she has a secret admirer?” She snorts. “Is that who picked her up earlier?”

“Yeah probably,” he rolls his eyes. “She’s been ditching me and our routine of going to the movies every Friday in order to go fucking watch the stars with Pete or some other romantic shit.”

Gee smirks. “Jealous?”

Frank scowls.

“Of Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the third?” he shakes his head. “Shut up.”

“Jesus, what a pretentious fucking name.” Gee makes her way over to Frank and sits down next to him on the steps of the deck. Their shoulders touch and Frank feels like he’s on fire.

“You’re telling me,” he says. “I don’t get what she sees in him.”

Gee waves a hand in the air. “Love is blind or some shit like that.”

Frank shrugs. Before he can stop himself he blurts out: “So have you found anyone at college?”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Frank says, flushing redder than Gee’s hair. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Christ you’re like my mother,” Gee’s voice hikes up two octaves as he imitates Mrs. Way, saying: “Oh Gee sweetheart when do you think you’re going to bring home a nice girl? Or even a nice boy? I just want to see you settled down before you put my old bones in a home.”

Frank snorts.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay.”

They’re quiet for a moment. The cigarette has long since been stubbed out in a flower pot of daisies but the smoke still lingers around them like a dirty halo. Gee twists her fingers together. Then she speaks.

“Like, my roommate Ray has his girlfriend Christa over all the time, and like, she’s really super sweet and I love her almost as much as I love Ray but,” she sighs. “I dunno it just seems like a relationship would be a lot of work and I don’t know anyone who’d be willing to put up with all of my gender shit on top of all of my mental and emotional shit.”

Frank feels the onset of a famous Gee Tangent coming on so he stays quiet and lets her air her grievances.

“I mean it’s not like I haven’t had relationships with people or kissed guys and girls but it’s just different when I’m… me,” her hands ball into fists. “Either people are only interested in dating me because they think that I’m a girl and when they find out I have a dick they hit the hills or they like the ‘novelty’,” she angrily makes air quotes, “of dating a trans girl just so they can brag to their friends about what a charitable _fucking_ human being they are for giving someone like me their time and attention.”

She slams her fist into the deck once and then again after a beat.

“I’m not a fucking charity case,” she hisses. “I’m not.”

“Never,” Frank agrees. “You’re Gee fuckin’ Way. You’re invincible.”

She laughs. It’s sad and almost sounds like a sob.

“If only.”

Gee sniffs and rubs the under of her nose.

“I did meet this one girl though, in Sculpture 202,” she smiles. “Her name’s Lindsey and we tried dating for a little bit but it just didn’t work out. We made better friends than anything else.”

Frank fidgets.

“Well that’s…good that you have friends up there at least,” he bites at his lip. “Next year when Mikey leaves I don’t…I don’t even know what I’m going to do.”

“You’ll get into a lot less fights, that’s for sure.”

“I suppose.”

“And you won’t have to worry about getting suspended or expelled or anything.”

“Maybe.”

Gee bumps her shoulder into Frank. “Come on kid, it’s not the end of the world. Believe me; once you get out of high school everything is just so much more…different. I mean, it’s worse in some aspects. It’s fucking shit. But it can also be so, so good too.”

Frank leans into her touch just a little bit. She’s like a fire, all fight and burning with emotion and he’s afraid that if he leans too close she’ll burn him up. She’ll eat him alive.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Frank whispers after a minute. The sun has almost set and it’s getting dark. In a moment, he’ll get up to turn on Gee’s back porch light but for right now he’s content to sit and shiver.

“Yeah sure.”

“I’m afraid you’ll both forget about me.” He pulls down the arms of his hoodie so they cover his hands. “I’m afraid that when Mikey follows you off to New York you guys are just gonna stay there and you’ll– you know what, no, never mind, this is stupid I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

In a burst of emotion Frank moves to stand up, to leave because _holy shit_ how could he embarrass himself like this, when Gee grabs at his wrist. They don’t speak. Then Gee does.

“You’re a lot tougher than anyone gives you credit for,” she says. “But it’s okay to not be tough all the time. Our white, cis male dominated society dictates that all men have to be stoic and strong, but that’s more toxic than any kind of emotional catharsis could ever be.”

This startles a laugh out of Frank.

“You know Gee,” he says. “You’re fucking one of a kind.”

“I know.” She smiles and presses her lips to the inside of his wrist. She leaves a perfect imprint of her mouth there, outlined in red lipstick.

Frank smiles too.

 

 

After that, something changes between Frank and Gee. They’ve always talked, been somewhat close, but because of her being away at college Frank has always had more of a connection with Mikey than her sister. But after the night on the porch they start talking more. They try keeping up with one another through letters and emails and the occasional surprise visit from Gee when she’s off on breaks and has scrounged up enough cash to snag a train ticket home.

The Christmas of his junior year of high school, Frank’s mom gets him his very own cell phone. Gee works tirelessly at the coffee shop on campus, pulling extra shifts and longer hours, in order to save up and buy a phone of her own from a second hand shop.

 ** _This is so much easier than fucking emailing_** **,** Frank texts her one night after his mom has long gone to bed.

 ** _Now I don’t have to wait three days to hear from you, cutie_** **,** she texts back. **_But let’s just try and stick to calling if you have to, each text costs me money and while I love hearing from you, I need that $$$ for textbooks._**

Frank’s face goes tomato red. He quietly types her number in and hits the call button.

“I’m sorry,” he says in lieu of a greeting.

Gee laughs on the other end. “It’s fine kid, it’s just I’m getting robbed ten cents a text and that doesn’t seem like a lot until you realize that ten texts are a dollar and a dollar could totally get me ramen.”

“Those instant noodles?” Frank’s nose wrinkles. “Gross.”

“You learn to choke down what you can when you’re poor,” she says. “And besides, Mr. Vegetarian, we can’t all afford to be so picky.”

Through the tinny sound coming out of the speaker, Frank can hear scribbling.

“What are you working on now?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“I said what are you working on?”

“Oh,” he hears her adjust and shuffle some papers. “See, they’re offering this comics course here and I couldn’t take it this semester but I have a friend that’s in the class and he’s been letting me borrow some of the materials they’re going through—it’s super interesting, I think it’s what I may wanna do, you know?”

“What, draw comics?”

“Yeah, like story boards and stuff, come up with ideas.”

“I think you’d do great at that,” Frank rolls over in his bed and presses the phone tighter to his ear. “You’ve always had a kind of knack for being creative. And a little weird.”

“Hey!” Gee snorts. “I resent that.”

“More like you resemble that.”

“Shut the fuck up, kid.”

“You’ll have to stop calling me kid eventually,” Frank says. “I’m gonna be 18 soon.”

“You still have like a whole year before your birthday.” He can’t see her face, but Frank bets that she’s rolling her eyes.

“Yeah that’s like, soon,” he laughs. “Ish.”

The fall into a comfortable silence.

“You should go to bed,” Gee says, and Frank can hear her continue to shade in whatever she’s working on. “Tomorrow’s Friday, you can stay up all you want then and talk to me. But you’re gonna be dead tired in the morning if you don’t.”

“It’s only midnight!” Frank argues.

“Yeah but I know you don’t sleep for shit,” she snorts. “It’s gonna take you another half an hour to finally go to bed after this. Mikey would always complain about you making noise whenever you spent the night.”

“She did?”

“Yeah but she meant it all in good nature,” A beat. “At least I’m pretty sure.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

It’s Frank’s turn to roll his eyes. “Okay smartass, I meant a real question.”

Gee laughs. “Yeah okay, shoot.”

“Are we dating?”

There’s silence on the other end. For a brief second, something akin to panic jolts in Frank’s stomach when he thinks Gee’s hung up on him.

“Why… why would you say that?” she finally says.

Frank feels like he’s swallowed a fist full of cotton balls.

“Um…,” he stutters. “Well like we’ve been talking a lot and… and you’ve always been really friendly with me and come and see me a lot and…” the longer he goes on with this, the stupider he feels. “And…you kissed me on your deck last summer, so I thought that meant—”

“Oh Frank…” Gee suddenly sounds very far away. “It’s late. I need to— I need—”

The line clicks and goes dead. Very carefully, Frank places the phone on the bedside table, face down. He rolls over to face the wall, and if anyone asked, he didn’t cry himself to sleep.

 

 

In the time that he’s known Gee, Frank has dated two people. He hesitates to use the term date because they were more like extended flings with people he thought he could hit it off with. But when he was with them, he could only ever, like a lovesick puppy, think of Gee.

The first was an absolutely heavenly girl named Jamia who was the size of an elf.

Her long black hair and big brown eyes were just the opposite of Gee, as was Jamia’s height, and when she laughed she squealed and snorted, which was kind of endearing in its own right. He fell in love with her at a party when she punched a dude right in the eye who wouldn’t stop harassing her. He fell more in love when she shook out her hand and asked him for his drink, for the ice to make sure her hand didn’t swell.

They didn’t date for long – just throughout the duration of his sophomore year until Jamia and he decided that they were better off as partners-in-crime instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. Like Frank, who had introduced her to Mikey (who had, herself, told Jamia all about her preferred pronouns), Jamia spends most of her time at Belleview High shoving assholes into lockers who dare think about looking at Mikey twice.

Mikey falls in love with Jamia possibly even more than Frank when Jamia gets Mikey a Naked palette set for her birthday. Frank assumes it’s important judging by the way Mikey’s eyes light up and Jamia brushes it off with “I only had to pull a couple of extra shifts at the gas station, it’s no big,” but then again Frank knows jack shit about make up so they could just be messing with him. But it probably is important.

When they stop dating—Jamia having pulled him aside after biology one afternoon saying: “listen, I just don’t think your heart is in this dude,” and Frank nods and almost starts crying out of relief—it isn’t awkward and their transition back into friends is seamless. In fact it’s Jamia that introduces Frank to the second and only person he’s ever dated (thus far) named Patrick.

Patrick comes after his Christmas phone call with Gee his junior year.

They share a band class and they start off first as friends because they both like to play the guitar and think that Maynard Ferguson is shit compared to Louie Armstrong.

The two don’t really become ‘boyfriends’ until Patrick kisses him under the bleachers after a marching band dress rehearsal. He’s sweaty from his band uniform, stripped down to his bibbers and undershirt.

They kiss like they have a secret to hide and Frank supposes that they do. Patrick is a freshman who’s probably just coming into his sexuality crisis. Frank’s had a lot of time to deal with this shit. And help from Gee.

The same Gee who has been ignoring his texts for the past couple of months. He gets the hint and tries to move on as best as possible. It still hurts like an open knife wound through the heart, but he figures his teenage spirit will bounce back eventually with enough angst. And maybe sex.

Dating Patrick is a lot different than dating Jamia because with Patrick everything is secretive.

They can’t hold hands, can’t go over to Pat’s house, can’t so much as hold eye contact for too long without him snapping at Frank—it’s getting to the point where Frank questions if it’s even worth it at all. Pat’s pudgy puppy body reminds him too much of a younger Gee. It’s painful. It’s worth it. It’s six thousand emotions all at the same time and none of them making sense.

Sometimes Patrick will grace Frank with his presence at lunch and they’ll hold hands under the table like it’s kindergarten all over again. On the one day he does sit with Frank, Mikey invites Pete to sit with them as well and holy shit Frank’s never heard Patrick talk that much in such a short period of time.

Mikey fumes silently about it the whole ride home and Frank laughs at her from the driver’s seat.

“Jealous that someone’s eyeing your boyfriend?” Frank asks.

“Shut up, he’s not my boyfriend,” Mikey grumbles. “And shouldn’t you be more worried that the person eyeing up Pete is _actually_ your boyfriend?”

He shrugs. He probably should be more worried, but he’s not, and he breaks up with Patrick later that month. To Patrick’s credit, he doesn’t cry or get angry, just looks a little lost.

“But why?”

“Because kid, I’m just not right for you,” Frank says.

They’ve managed to sneak back to the choir room and hide behind a rack of music stands. When they’re together, they’re always hiding. It kind of pisses Frank off.

Patrick casts his eyes down to the dirty linoleum floor. “Can we still be friends?”

“Of course we can,” Frank smiles. It’s probably the first time he’s actually smiled at this kid and meant it and it sort of makes him feel like a douche. “You’re still a really cool dude. We’re just better friends than—” Frank waves a hand to accent his point.

When the year draws to a close and Frank watches as Mikey gets depressed and nostalgic for this hellhole of a school, he suddenly thinks to himself that it’s not fair. That even when Gee’s gone, Mikey following in her footsteps, she’s got a hold on Frank’s life.  

Because when it comes back to it, it’s been her. From the time he was ten and knocked on her door and she ran him ragged looking for her NES up until this very moment, this very position in the solar system at this exact second in time, it’s always been Gee.

When he comes to senior graduation to watch Mikey strut across the stage and accept her diploma, Frank finds Gee’s flaming red hair in the crowd. She’s all eyes on Mikey, never looking Frank’s way once. Maybe that’s for the best.

 

 

_Frank,_

_You have to understand that I love you Frank, but you’re just too young. And we’re just too far away. You deserve someone who can be there for you and make you happy, not someone who freaks out and dyes their hair every three weeks because of a manic episode or stays up until 4:30 because they can’t figure out if they want to kill themselves or not._

_Frank, I’m not a steady type of girl. I’m hardly a girl enough to stay together for myself, let alone for another person. I don’t know if I could do a relationship right now. Truthfully, I don’t know if I could do one ever. That’s a lot of trust to put into one person._

_I’m going to be staying in New York for a little while. I know I should be graduating, but because of some problems that went on my sophomore year I’m a little behind schedule. I’ll probably end up being a super duper senior, could you imagine that? Here’s to hoping there aren’t going to be any more setbacks or moments where I feel like I wanna pull a Van Gogh and eat an entire bottle of paint during a panic attack._

_I know I’m probably not the person you want to hear from right now. You probably feel like I lead you on, and in a way I suppose I did. And I’m sorry. I really do have feelings for you, I suppose, but now’s not the right time to act on them. You have to focus on school. I have to focus on staying alive and getting out of here in one piece. (It’s a lot harder than it sounds, trust me)._

_Mikey’s coming to live with me and Ray, which is nice. We managed to get a release form to get her out of the dorms where she should be living with the other freshman. I’m gonna try and make it so that she has a better start than I did. She’s thinking that she’s gonna go into something with music which is cool, like maybe being a producer or a technician who works with fixing the studio equipment. She seems to have her mind pretty made up._

_She said to say hi and to not forget to call her this Friday._

_Do you think you’ll come out to New York too?_

_I hope you’re well. Remember to eat, kid._

_Gee <3_

Frank reads the email once, then twice, then a third time. He closes his laptop and doesn’t respond to it. He’s just so tired and it’s just not fair.

 

 

When his senior year starts, Frank, Jamia, and Patrick still sit together at lunch. Mikey’s spot at the table has been replaced with another sophomore named Joe who is apparently Patrick’s next door neighbor. If Frank tries hard enough, he can almost pretend that the Way sisters were just a figment of his imagination that spanned the best eight years of his life.

He doesn’t get into any fights that year. He applies to Northwestern University and gets accepted.

**Author's Note:**

> [if you’d like, feel free to follow me on tumblr](http://myrtlewilson.tumblr.com)


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